So, everybody has an opinion about Billy Beane. It’s not that he’s under more scrutiny than his peers--that distinction belongs to the larger-market GMs.  Rather, because of a certain best-selling book which must not be named (not again), Billy has come to stand for all sorts of things--like the ideas that walks are under-valued and steals are over-valued--or at least used to be.  More than anything, though, I think Billy came to stand for the idea that a smart general manager can make up for financial disadvantages.  It was particularly bold for him to allow himself to stand for that idea, and for those who agreed with it, he became celebrated--even labeled by some as a genius.  Then there were those who disagreed--they still write the “fIRe BeAnE hE sUCKs aNd sHouLD Go JOIn hiS PAl MAchO,” fAnPOsts on this site.

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Alas, the Fanpost editor has stymied all of our top DLD talents.  With them on a work stoppage, amateurs like myself step into the void. Alas ...

Bruce Jenkins wrote a column mostly from the Giants' perspective, after the A's 23-5 win on Friday.  After attempting to soothe Giants fans' fears by saying they shouldn't give up on Zito yet, he went on to address the general bland-ness of Bay Area managers. 

A good way to fall asleep - and I mean completely gone, complete with snoring and drooling - is to listen to Bruce Bochy or Bob Geren, respective managers of the Giants and A's. Don't get me wrong; they're terrific guys. They're just not too lively, and each is presiding over a deathly quiet camp

But boring ain't all bad, Jenkins points out.  He asks if you would prefer the camp of Manny Acta's Washington Nationals, whose camp features a guy with an infamous reputation (Elijah Dukes),  the sibling of another such infamous guy (Dmitri Young), another guy whose reputation might be headed in that direction (Lastings Milledge) and two guys with all sorts of steroids taint on their reps (Bret Boone and Paul LoDuca).  (Characterizations are Jenkins', paraphrased)

The KC Star's Joe Posnanski is no sabermatrician, but he does like to tinker with stats occasionally.  In the most two recent entries on his blog, he questions whether teams need a certain number of star players to win, or whether they can cobble together pennants by amassing high quantites of merely above-average players.  The funnest part of the column is where he determines who all the star players were in the American League last year.

Boston 8 (Varitek, Youkilis, Pedroia, Lowell, Manny, Ortiz, Beckett, Schilling).
New York 7 (Posada, Cano, Jeter, A-Rod, Matsui, Abreu, Wang).
Cleveland 7 (Martinez, Garko, Peralta, Sizemore, Hafner, Carmona, Sabathia).
Anaheim 6 (Kotchman, Figgins, Anderson, Vlady, Lackey, Escobar)
Detroit 6 (Polanco, Guillen, Granderson, Ordonez, Sheffield, Verlander).
Baltimore 5 (Roberts, Markakis, Tejada, Bedard, Guthrie)
Seattle 4 (Beltre, Ibanez, Suzuki, Guillen).
Minnesota 4 (Mauer, Morneau, Hunter, Santana).
Toronto: 4 (Glaus, Rios, Thomas, Halladay … Burnett just missed).
Tampa Bay 4 (Pena, Crawford, Upton, Kazmir)
Chicago 3 (Thome, Vazquez, Buehrle).
Oakland 2 (Haren, Swisher).
Kansas City 2 (Meche, Bannister)
Texas 1 (Young)

Oh well.

Also, pimping Ray Ratto like I always do:  on stadiums selling out their naming rights.  The latest is that Wrigley might do so.

Dump away.

So I'm Rubin Sierra, but those of you who know me probably know me as "that guy who's always talking about how much he likes Ray Ratto."  But I don't just like Ray Ratto; I like sportswriting in general, and I'm rather opinionated about what I like.  While I don't generally agree with AN as to what constitutes good sportswriting (see above), the opinions of AN have expanded the number of columnists I read a bit.  Years ago, somebody in AN turned me on to ESPN's Bill Simmons, who I've since read pretty regularly, even if he is a bit long-winded and a bit too much of a frat-boy.  More recently, I've gotten hip to the stylings of The Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski.  I like.

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So somewhere in the 609-comment Swisher thread, there's a link to a strangely-abbreviated Ray Ratto column. However, while AN did get the chance to weigh in on RR's latest bold prediction, I think we all missed Ratto's latest ponderous musings:  Until now.

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First-time dumper, long-time lurker.  

This dump is in honor of the great Kevin Thompson, who the Pirates stole away from us on this sad, sad Monday.

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Blaming the Media is one of our favorite pasttimes, right up there with whining about the other team's lack of class and Blaming the Umpires.  But sometimes, the media earns its bad reputation.  Like today.

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<vent>
Go ahead and bash Zito for his control issues.  Dude walks too many people.  Bash him for falling short of his potential:  After his Cy Young 2002, I think we all expected better than the 2003-06 that he delivered.  So bash him for peaking too early in his career.

But for God's sake, stop bashing him for his decision to sign with the Giants.

Oh, hell, keep doing it if it makes you feel better about yourself. After all, this guy had a major life decision to make, one in which millions of dollars hung in the balance, one that would decide where he'd spend the next 5-7 years of his life--and whose interests did he look out for? His own!? How dare he!?

It was suggested elsewhere on this website that Zito could have conceivably taken half of the $126 milliion  the Giants gave him to return to the A's.  It was stated that "if I'm truly going to admire one of these athletes as an individual beyond the game, it's going to take action like" that.

Well how about this:  thank God for Zito and those that know him that he has his priorities straight, and that he's more concerned with his own well-being than he is with earning the admiration of fans whom he doesn't know from Adam Piatt.  

Guys like Zito have hit the lottery by having a major talent in a major sport, and they are being paid as lottery-winners.  And they have a chance to use that money as we all dream we would if we won the lottery--to make themselves and their families set for life, to never have to worry about money again.  If they're generous, to give some of it to charity.

And a drawback of all this is that they are going to have to live the rest of their lives with people wanting to take some of that money from them--people who say 'after all, you don't really need it, you have so much.'  People will come to them with a million causes they should support, a million investment opportunities they should get involved in, a million ideas about what they should do with their money.  

And that's what I'm hearing when I hear some of you questioning Zito's decision to take the biggest contract offered him: You are complaining that he didn't donate to your cause, one of the most ludicrous causes I've ever heard of:  it's the "take less money to play for my favorite team, because it's the team you played with last year" cause.

Or the even-more-ridiculous, "take less money to play with a team that I think has a better chance of winning a championship" cause. Never mind that your opinion of which team has the better chance of winning a championship is as worthless as Harold Reynolds'. How is it admirable to opt to play for a front-runner? If the Yankees and the Royals were the main bidders for Zito, explain to me how admirable it would be for Zito to take less to play for the Yankees. In truth, players in general do prefer to play for good teams over bad ones, but the size of the discount they will give good teams is a sign not of nobility but of a different KIND of selfishness.

Now, if Zito were to agree to donate his salary to these causes of yours, where would the money go to?  Ahh, I know--to needy baseball executives, who would get to pay players less and pocket the extra money for themselves.

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I didn't realize the song I was covering (Wonderwall, Oasis--here's 30 seconds worth of the sound, so you can get it stuck in your head like it was in '98) was so short; but then, I'm glad it is, because I've got to go to sleep.  Feel free to add more verses.

Kotsay is gonna be the A
That is gonna bat number two,
And now, saint's havin' a cow
Saying Macha you don't have a clue
I don't believe that Stomper isn't
really FSU. <tears oblique> ooooowwww

Drumbeat, in the bleachers high street
Close enough to hear M-Bradley shout.
Swish-er went to visit Jennifer
He's in the basement and he can't get out.
Blez doesn't believe we're gonna need
A transcription of that interview ... <tears oblique> ooooowwwww

And all the monkeys' blindfolds--well, they're blinding
And still they type out insights and they're rhyming
There are many posts that I
Would like to reply to
But I don't know how

Bobby Crosbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Not funnier than Bill Cosbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
But snerk-iest of allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Is our monkeyballllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Full lyrics of wonderwall here. As you can see, the above verses simply repeat in various orders; although like I suggested before, perhaps some more verses are called for.  Just not tonight.  

Sort of a hippy/progressive report card, like they used to have (and maybe still do have) at Santa Cruz.  Also, the reports will be not so much evaluations but rather little discoveries I make when checking each player's on-line profile.  Or litle snerky remarks I've been wanting to "report" about each player.  

position players
Jason Kendall:  After an 0-for on Tuesday, Kendall's .271 average is exactly what it was at the end of 2005.
Mark Kotsay:  clubhouse veteran is still young enough to have started his career with the expansion Marlins.  
Milton Bradley:  I still can't believe he hit a walkoff 3-run jack against B.J. Ryan on AN Day.  As long as we can keep him on the field, this guy is definitely a "Gamer".
Frank Thomas:  I can't stop dreading watching him walk in the offseason.  
Eric Chavez:  Our lovable head case.
Jay Payton:  Our Kotsay Lite is having an up-year, compensating for Kotsay's down-year.
Nick Swisher: Seems to have regressed to last year's mean.  What?  What did I say?
Bobby Crosby: Has stolen 8 bases in 9 attempts.  <dodges negativity>
Mark Ellis: Continues to be the team's most unicorn-friendly player.  
Marco Scutaro:  Is approaching Mike Gallego-like status in terms of impressively staying in or near the everyday lineup despite all expectations to the contrary.  
Antonio Perez:  A lovable underdog in a different sense than Scutaro--in the sense that anybody hitting under .100 in August is a lovable underdog.
Dan Johnson:  Would replace Perez on major-league roster if not for some rule about options.  
Bobby Kielty:  Continues to stubbornly prevent the 2003 Lilly-for-Kielty deal from being characterized as a total disaster.
Adam Melhuse: Is two years older than Kendall.

pitchers
Barry Zito:  It's not his choice of agents that makes me sure he's gone; it's Beane's comment that the team will have to operate "the same way it has" until some stadium dollars have materialized.  
Dan Haren:  Consistently on the verge of great.
Joe Blanton:  Consistently on the verge of good.
Esteban Loaiza:  Consistently mediocre, no verge about it.
Rich Harden:  The bitterest pill of 2006.  
Kirk Sarloos:  Like Melhuse, always a guy the A's go to reluctantly.  
Shane Komine:  Not the savior he initially appeared to be.  But still, potentially, pretty good.
Brad Halsey:  Making us forget Juan Cruz.
Chad Gaudin:  Making us forget the minor leaguer(s) and/or cash considerations and/or draft picks we traded for him.  Making us forget how the hell we ever got him.
Joe Kennedy:  On the DL.  
Ron Flores:  Trying to make us forget Joe Kennedy.  
Jay Witasick:  Last pitched June 19 in Colorado.  Last posted July 27th in "Calling the ladies of AN."
Kiko Calero:  Very solid.  In 2003, he was a 28-year-old rookie.
Justin Duchscherer: Too good to have only pitched 35 innings this year.
Huston Street:  Not lights out, but lights dimmed significantly, making a rally much more difficult to start.

Things are not what they appear; not always, anyway.  This would appear to many, for example,  to be a dreary-dull time in the sports calendar, a time during which PTI leads with stories on the Buick Open, on Floyd Landis, and on NFL preseason.  But we A's fans know it as the best time of the year:  Fire season, if you will, when our green-and-gold enigmas (they're great; no wait, they suck, time to lower expectations) ignite their secret win-win-win machines.  

Just as things are not as they seem in the sports world, so it is on AN.   On first glance, nothing remarkable about August 7 on AN.  But upon further review--helluva day, folks.  

And to try the analogy one more time:  Surface appearance would tell you that the diary Wow. by AsFoLife would have little in common with the diary A Defense of Reason and Sanity by oaktoon.   And this time on closer examination, there are plenty more differences.  But there is also one profound similarity:  unintentional comedy.

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So the latest is that the reason for Reynolds' firing is indeed an accusation of sexual harassment.  Which is unfortunate, for some obvious reasons and some not-so-obvious ones.  Among the latter, it's unfortunate because it means it the firing is not due to the ESPN programming director waking the hell up and realizing what his once-proud station has turned into.  

I used to love ESPN highlight shows, and my only complaint was that there weren't enough of them.  If my unspoken complaint somehow wished the current mess into existence, I regret it profoundly.  The highlight shows are too long, and to fill the time, too many uninteresting ex-jocks are stuffed into suits and prodded into yapping at us like contestants in a junior-high debate.  It used to be that when I thought about ESPN, I thought of the smart-and-polished anchors:  Patrick, Olbermann, and Kilborn at the top of the list.  But now, the anchors on SportsCenter are overshadowed by the dozen talking-heads per show that are brought on to provide so-called analysis.  

There's nothing inherently wrong with analysis.  A couple of analysts named Kornheiser and Wilbon bring us ESPN's one good half-hour of programming per day.  I'm waiting for ESPN to ruin that.  In the meantime, I'd have to say that the number of clearly-inept ESPN anchors I've seen or heard (on ESPN Radio) is probably now over 100.  And Harold Reynolds was, for me,  the first.  Hard to say whether this speaks to my getting old enough to notice, or ESPN actually moving down the road it has.  But it was HR who first made me do a double-take and think, "He just talked for 45 seconds, but he didn't say anything."  Now, with 100 Reynolds clones onboard at ESPN (and, in my imagination, living together in a dorm across the street from Bristol headquarters like 12-year-old boys at a summer camp); the original dimwit analyst can be dismissed--100 potential replacements are available, and they all suck pretty much equally.

I have become very attached to this community, even if in physical terms this can be looked at as being very attached to my personal computer, staring blankly into the screen for hours on end.  No, this may not be what most would refer to as a healthy love affair.  But for what it's worth, I'm hooked, as I can tell that many of you are hooked as well.  But before I get around to the title of this post, let me tell you about my particular brand of hooked.  

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MC:  And now, Your AN Day Special Guests, Mycheal Urban and Susan Slusser!!

Audience:  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

That's not me boo-ing; that's just a scenario I was imagining in my mind's eye as I read through yesterday's rural (anti-Urban) thread.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

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One of the coolest things about AN is the user-profile pages.  Click on any user's name and you can then access every diary AND EVERY COMMENT he or she has ever made.  I occasionally feel guilty for having wasted too much time at AN, but at least my entire body of "work" here remains accessible to me--and the same holds for every AN user.  Lately I've been thinking that the archives may be too good to be true, and that it will be discovered that the server runs remarkably smoother once they're all deleted.  This would be a great tragedy, and so in the spirit of enjoying our own personal AN libraries while we have them, I bring you this diary of Fun With Your User Profile.

Using your handy-dandy user profile, you can answer the following questions:  

1. What was the date of your first AN comment or diary (whichever came first)?  
   
2. How many diaries have you posted?
   
3. And of course--How many comments have you made?  

1. 10/01/04
   
2. this is my 32nd
   
3. 1,159

On May 22, the link dump had well over 300 comments.  It was what people these days are calling a World Cup atmosphere--insanity prevailed, and we all thought there would never again be anything like it, or at least not for four years or so.  Wrong on that count--over the last two weeks, every weekday linkdump goes 200+ comments, 300 maybe every other day.  Two weeks after the 5/22 link dump, we had the 6/9 link dump--495 comments.  It was kind of like Bonds breaking McGwire's record just three years after McGwire did it--yes, the link dump is definitely on performance-enhancing drugs.  I read the 495-comment Friday dump, hoping to draw some conclusions about AN chatter in the new Link-Dump Era.

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Some days, you dump links.  And on some days, the links dump YOU.  And then there are days like today, when the dumps and the links are so prolific and brilliant as to be indistinguishable, as they fly by like planes overrun by mice, snakes, dinosoars, albatrosses, obliques, Larry Davis clones and dead parrots.  Today was one of those days.  In a nutshell ...

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Great thread by LurkerD with 170+ comments yesterday, from lurkerD's statement--how is it that what Kendall did so courageous or commendable?--to baseballgirl's rejoinder--yeah but it sure was fun to watch a fight for a change!  (Note: paraphrasing very badly).  I remember my high-school friends and I always yearning to go to a game that featured a bench-clearing brawl, so for that part of my inner fan, today was certainly a big success.  

On the other hand, a closer examination of our guy's actions--which lurkerD's post requires us to make--tells us pretty clearly that they were far from heroic.  Kendall either a) acted in the throws of a tempermental passion and needs anger management counselling (charging the mound in response to an insult?  But then confer Apricot's post on rituals in baseball--much more acceptable than charging, say, your boss in real life); or b) acted according to a plan, craftily (read: Pyrzynski-ishly) getting the Angels' best starting pitcher ejected from the game at minimal cost to us (Kendall suspension--who cares?  Err, I mean, now who will "handle" our pitching staff?).  

Should we all now feel bad for our initial cheers?  Well, as PosterNutBag eloquently put it, "Not a single person on this, or any other blog, has any right to look down on anyone for any of this."  No big deal, people, just a little scrum.  Sure, we all got excited, surprise, surprise--as McFood pointed out, humans have been getting excited about violence for oh, about the whole history of mankind.  

Use this thread to continue talking about the brawl yesterday, including update w.r.t. any penalty handed down.  And while doing so:  be good to yourselves ... and each other.  

   In keeping an eye on the SF Chron's Athletics coverage the past couple of days, it seems that a behind-the-scenes controversy is developing.  You might say the A's are embroiled in it.
   After Sunday's Angels game, wrote Chronicle writer Ron Kroichick, "On the dirt in front of Oakland's dugout, a white bucket rested on its side, with bags of sunflower seeds scattered nearby."
   A crime had been committed.  A crime of passion.  And so, suspicion immediately fell on the most notoriously-passionate Athletic:
   "I wasn't throwing them out there," manager Ken Macha said.
   Riiiight.  Like we said, suspicion immediately fell on the most notoriously-PASSIONATE Athletic.
   As Kroichick wrote, "Given ... his combustible history, Bradley was a logical bucket-toppling candidate, but he calmly denied any involvement."
   Yet a witness (Kroichick) says Bradley "angrilly flung his bat" after his ninth-inning pop out in Sunday's game, just minutes before the bucket went from upright to sideways.  
   The incriminating evidence continued to pour in against Bradley yesterday, when A's beat writer Susan Slusser's excellent investigative reporting brought forth two anonymous sources:
   "Two members of the team confirmed Sunday's suspicions that Milton Bradley tossed the bucket of sunflowers seeds during the game vs. the Angels," wrote Slusser, who then attempted to fight the flames of controversy by adding, "but the general sentiment was: good. The A's like Bradley's intensity and desire to win, seed-tossing and all."
    But who were these anonymous informants who turned Bradley over to the media hounds? And faced with the now-mounting evidence against him, will Bradley confess? Or is he being framed? And how many buckets of sunflower seeds will be overturned before these treacherous snacks are banned from the clubhouse?
    And finally, will this controversy overshadow the team and the game we love? Will baseball ever be the same, or will the bucket, now toppled, never be truly upright again, seeds scattered in the dirt like children's tears?

Initially I was going to suggest that grover start this thread, since he posted at 12:30 in the morning, a great post at the bottom of the 330-comment comment-a-ganza (comment-a-palooza?) prompted by oaktoon's diary.  But though it's only an hour later, now it's safe to assume that all, including grover, are asleep, and grover might very well not receive any suggestion I make that he start a new thread until midday tomorrow, by which time who knows, the A's and Tigers could be tied 11-11 in the 6th, and all community guidelines may have been removed as the community descends into total anarchy due to Zito-angst.  

So I'll do it myself.  I just wanted to create this space to continue the Oaktoon/CGV soap-opera that so intrigued all of us yesterday. We talk A's baseball here, and baseball in general.  We talk television and movies ... we talk players' asses.  We get sophisticated and debate steroids.  But for all that, nothing really draws our interest like a fight--when the discussion between members gets heated.  (And now that I've characterized us all as simplistic rubber-neckers, I have to say that yesterday's thread was so fun to read because of the INTELLIGENT argument--which it could very-well be argued, would descend into unreadable crap without the CGVs.)

My own two cents:  Blez's need to police the site goes without saying. But it's interesting how nothing brings about a flurry of activity on AN more than those masters of provocation who tend to disregard the rules.  Reminds me of Robb's diaries last fall, which were also prolifically commented-on.  Oaktoon also reminds me of Terrell Owens.  Though they (O.T. and T.O.) do disregard certain rules, they also appeal to our sense of fairness in claiming that they ought not to be penalized.  And their value to their respective teams (or in Oak's case, to the site) cannot be easily dismissed.  I think the Eagles bungled the T.O. situation ... but how should they have handled it?   Your thoughts?

Florida St. 27, Virginia Tech 22--and so FSU wins the ACC "Championship" and with it an automatic BCs berth.  The correct response to this is "Who cares?"  

Well, nobody I know, but it does remind me of some things that I care about.  Because I saw the result, and I saw Florida State's record (four losses), and I said to myself--is that really the ACC Championship game?  Isn't Miami in that conference?  How the hell does FSU get to be champ of a conference in which it lost three consecutive games?

The answer is--bad playoff system.  The current wave of stupidity in college postseason tinkering has conferences splitting themselves in half, in order to add a conference championship game.  And so we give you four-loss Florida State in the Orange Bowl, while better teams play in the MPC Computer Bowl, the Outback Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, et al.  

This type of thing is common.  In college football, everybody is up in arms about the lack of "a playoff."  But other sports' playoff systems have their own problems.  I, for one, still am opposed to the wild card, at least as it's currently employed.  The NBA playoffs are perhaps the least-exciting in professional sports.  And while everybody loves the NCAA tournament in basketball, one would have to agree that it's the playoff LEAST likely to ensure that the best team wins the championship.

So what is the ideal playoff?  

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"The Natural" by Bernard Malamud, c. 1952.  Movie directed by Barry Levinson, 1984.  I bring it up partly to follow baseballgirl's lead and do a book talk of sorts, and partly because Albert Pujols did his own Roy Hobbs impersonation last night.

The movie I saw when I was about seven, probably when it was in the theaters.  What seven-year-old boy wouldn't like that movie?  The book I heard as a book-on-tape, a couple months ago; and I thought it was ... weird.  Definitely a lot of what was great about the movie came from the book.  But there was also a whole lot of strange crap in the book that left me just sort of puzzled.  

NOTE:  Stop reading now if you don't want to find out how either the book or the movie ends.  

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So now that the OLD Ken Macha is gone and the NEW Ken Macha regime has begun, I think we all have some ideas about how he might run things differently next year. Of course, barring a career resurrection next year, I think none of us wants to see Jason Kendall repeatedly batting near the top of the order, nor do we want to see him play 150 games when 130 would make far more sense. We all may have numerous other Macha pet peeves, but aside from the Kendall issue, and the avoiding-double-plays issue, I have another idea to throw out there for whomever the new manager is:  Put Justin Duscherer to work more.  The guy is too good to be a middle reliever.  I think he'd be better-employed as a starter.

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I posted this diary May 24.  
http://www.athleticsnation.com/story/2005/5/24/15371/6628
When I posted it, the ex-A's looked a whole lot better than the A's.  If anything, the gap has narrowed.

In particular, the ex-A's pitching staff has faltered after surging out of the gate.  Mark Redman cooled most significantly, Kenny Rogers melted down after his hot start, and Arthur Rhodes and Chris Hammond also cooled, but less so.  Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder wound up being the aces of this rotation after all.

The ex-A's made two acquisitions at the break:  Eric Byrnes seemed the more-significant acquisition at the time, but he has struggled.  Chad Bradford, on the other hand, has bolstered the ex-A's bullpen.  

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I say "desperation time" because we are beyond resonably hoping to make the playoffs and it is time to resort to praying for miracles.  While the Giants are in the exact same position vis-a-vis the Padres, mathematically, it looks a lot more grim for us since our A's have been playing .500 ball, give-or-take, for over a month, and have shown no recent signs of getting hot.  We need to pray that we get hot, and fast.  

As for this game specifically--it has to give us stomach troubles to see John Lackey coming up against us--he has shut us out for 13 or so straight innings, I think.  He threw shutout ball for 6 innings against us back in August, and then did it to us in Anaheim again earlier this month.  

The thing is, while Lackey got some props as one of the rookies that contributed to the 2002 World Series win, he was basically a mediocre pitcher during 2003 & 2004 before rounding into form during the latter half of this year.  We need to see some of that mediocrity we know Lackey is capable of!  In fact, we need to pray for it.  

I have to go to work now; I will hear nothing about the game until my lunch break at 8p.m. God, please let Bill King say, "and at the end of 3, it's A's 12, Anaheim nothing" as I step into my car. Or let Ken Korach say it. Hell, let Hank Greenwald into the booth to say it. And please don't disregard my prayer just because I said "hell." Send me there, but don't disregard my prayer. Alright, i'll shut up now.

What better time than now, after a series of games in which bullpen management has proved crucial.  Let us consider the case of the People vs. Ken Macha, in which the defendant is faced with multiple charges:  1) One count of Heinous Bullpen Mismanagement; 2) One count of Failure to Create Offense; 3) One count of Uninspiring On-Field Demeanor; and 4) One count of Debilitating Lack of Faith in Certain Players.  

Macha has merely, thus far, been indicted; we now consider whether to convict on the above four counts.  We take up the indictments one at a time, starting with ...

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Although I'm not always against first-pitch swinging, perhaps Chavy's ANTI-Moneyball approach is failing.  I heard him explain it on a Jim Rome interview earlier this year; he said he just doesn't like taking that many pitches.

Nevertheless, look at the numbers during Chavez's patient year (last year) vs. his impatient year (this year).  That would seem to show that Moneyball suits him better after all:

2004  475 ABs, 95 BBs, 99 Ks, 29 HRs
2005  532 ABs, 50 BBs, 113 Ks, 22 HRs

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Based on past trends and a comprehensive statistical analysis of my fantasies, the best route to the playoffs for Oakland is for them to lose every game on this current road trip, get denounced by Ray Ratto, Harold Reynolds, and even Rob Neyer as a flash-in-the-pan bound to finish under .500, at which point they can do a complete 0-to-60 (or May-to-June) upon returning home next week and sprint by everybody.

After all, the A's success has recently involved finishing strong (see regular seasons 2000-2003).  Their failures have often come when they start strong and then fade (see postseason 2001, 2003 ... also August/September 2004).  In other words, they do better when coming from behind (in the standings).  

So as A's fans, I suggest we play the percentages.  Let's relax this week and conserve our energy for when we really need it.  We might as well ... the slump's probably going to last another week (it only just started).  Maybe we can win Harden's start, or Zito's ... but really, we can use this week to build a nice-sized deficit that lots of so-called experts will say is insurmountable.  Yes, they'll toss us on the scrap heap, they'll suggest that we trade Zito or Chavez for prospects.  

Then, next week, bring out your rabbits' feet, your rally caps, your prayers to all deities ... next week it's on.  This week ... let it go.  If you use up all your energy agonizing about this week, you might find yourself jumping off the bandwagon in disgust right before it gets revved up and rollin'.  

So when the All-Star Game ended in a tie three years back, I was annoyed.  Selig screwed that up.  And then, when he "fixed" it, by making the game "meaningful", having it decide which league would have home-field at the WS, I was more-annoyed.  The only new rule that was necessary was one that would say:  No Ties.  You'd think such a rule wouldn't even be necessary, since it's kind of an implied rule in baseball, period, which is why that tie was such a disgrace.  You play the game until it's over.  I didn't think any other fixing was necessary--the All-Star Game didn't need to be more competitive. They just needed to finish the damn game.

Still, the IDEA of making the All-Star Game meaningful seems to have intrigued people.  
What could we do to make the All-Star game competitive?  And I think the answer is--make it an All-Star SERIES.  Best 3-out-of-5.

Why?  Well, what makes the All-Star game so much an exhibition is the presence of these enormous rosters FOR ONE FREAKIN' GAME!  32 players!  Even accepting that not all of them will play, just trying to get 25 of them into the game is kind of a circus.  10-12 pithcers, and most of them starters?!  Of course it feels like an exhibition--the starters come out after 2 innings.

So how do you make the games more like REAL baseball games?  You play the starters longer.  Your starter goes seven innings, or he goes for a complete game.  You play to win.  But in a single game, then you only need 12 or so  of the 32 guys selected.  So you could just have smaller rosters, 15 or 16 on each side, with just one, maybe two starting pitchers.  But if you did that, the team whose starting pitcher was chosen to go 7-9 innings would be at a disadvantage against the rest of the league.

On the other hand, you could have an All-Star series, with each league fielding a starting ROTATION.  Then the big rosters could still be allowed (although 32 may be too big; 25 is probably more appropriate).  I think an All-Star series might be a lot of fun, and I think a rivalry would more likely develop if the leagues were to play 3-7 games against each other.  

What do you think?  An idea with potential?  Or no potential whatsoever?

I doubt I'll watch even the highlights of the All-Star game, but I enjoy finding out about and critiquing the selection of the team--it's fun to make my own selections and then rail indignantly on about how piss-poor the actual selections are conducted.  This year gives me plenty opportunity to bitch and moan:  honestly, issuing fan ballots by the truckload at games, and making balloting available on the internet; it's such a dopey system, it makes almost as little sense as deciding the presidency based on "electoral votes" rather than on the popular vote.  

(Having said that, the fans' selections this year are pretty spot-on, pretty-much perfect in the AL, and with only two significant brain-farts in the NL--Beltran and Rolen.)

The player-voting and manager-voting has brought us results no less ridiculous than the fan-voting.  I mean, Shea Hillenbrand?  Luis Castillo, but no Carlos Delgado?  Some of this comes, I think, from a ballot that's not flexible--that makes players choose one reserve second baseman, one reserve first baseman, etc.  Ideally, this should be done by a committee of writers, who could realize when one position needs more reserves than another.  

The fans' errors are most likely due to a failure to perceive a recent development--so that a guy with star power gets voted into the game despite an early-season slump/injury that should make him ineligible.  But what we see this year is that the players and managers' choice of reserves tend to be the opposite in nature--they over-value the statistics compiled in one half-season, and overlook guys who have been stars for years and have had pretty solid seasons.  Guys like our own Eric Chavez.

And guys like Derek Jeter.  Thus, you have an All-Star game WITHOUT Jeter, perhaps the game's biggest star, who's playing as well as ever this year.  (Not to sympathize with the Yankees--but an All-Star game without Jeter ... that's pretty dumb.)  You also have the choice of Duke over Chavy.  I mean, Duke has been a revelation, and I wish him many more All-Star selections.  But the choice of him over Chavez this year reflects a willful failure to factor in a player's past accomplishments, his star-power.  

Which is particularly galling in situations like these where these are MIDSEASON awards--a failure to take past seasons into account means that a player's second-half performance will never help him get into an All-Star game ... so it is with Chavez. (Poll below)

I guess we're still awaiting Kenny Rogers' explanation for why he attacked a cameraman who filmed him as he was walking out to the field for pre-game stretching.  On the one hand, no explanation would appear to be forthcoming, because Rogers hasn't spoken to the media all year.  But on the other hand, you'd think that he HAS to issue a statement, because unexplained, his behavior was so bizarre and reprehensible as to be borderline criminal (criminal battery: intentionally causing another to experience a harmful or offensive touching)

There's a tendency to dismiss this as no big deal--the ESPN link says "Rogers snaps at photographers," ignoring the physical nature of what happened.  I don't think he should be arrested, but shouldn't this be taken sort of seriously?  See poll below